Normally Perfect
by ObsessivelyOdd
Summary: Alex is taking being a fully-fledged agent in stride. He's even managing his school work and football with a certain amount of ease. But he'll never like his maths teacher. It's just not going to happen. SEQUEL to Perfectly Normal.


_**A/N: Ok, so here it is! The long-awaited sequel to Perfectly Normal. This is not a full, chaptered fic, I'm afraid. But it is just under 4000 words, which makes it the longest one-shot I've written, so be happy!**_

_**DISCLAIMER: I own nothing you recognise.**_

-o-O-o-

Alex cannot quite believe his life, sometimes. Sure, he's MI6's top agent, and quite possibly being groomed for headship, according to rumours, but even at the tender age of fifteen, this wasn't what he found most far-fetched.

No, that honour went to the man currently sitting at the table in the kitchen. He knew that cooking wasn't especially high on a soldier's must-master list of skills, but surely they would need some _basic_ knowledge in order to survive un-poisoned.

Apparently not, he amended, looking from Eagle to the pile of mangled paper in front of him.

Surely even Eagle would have been able to figure out that a stack of reports – important, _top secret_ reports – were not for use in cooking?

"Eagle," he began, "What…?"

The man looked at him expectantly.

"What happened to my reports?" he asked, faintly.

"Oh! Were they yours? Sorry, I thought they were scrap."

"Scrap," repeated Alex in a flat voice.

"Yeah. Well, I was making some scrambled eggs, but I think I used a bit too much flour in them, so I added some more milk, only I added too much, and as I already had too much flour in there, I didn't want to add more and, yeah… People always complain that scrambled eggs taste like cardboard if they're not done right, so I thought maybe the paper would help!"

Alex stared at him in amazement. How could _anyone_ be that clueless about something as basic as cooking?

"Ok, guys?" he called into the living room, where the others were sitting with cups of coffee, having passed on breakfast when they saw who was cooking. "New Rule: Eagle is never allowed to cook."

"That's an old rule," Snake hollered back. "Eagle just ignores it!"

"Why is that a rule?" pouted Eagle.

Alex sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"1. You added _flour_ to scrambled eggs. And milk. Therefore, you have no idea about the most basic of recipes. 2. You obviously cannot distinguish complaints from compliments as you actually _attempted_ to make your breakfast taste of cardboard and 3. _You shredded and then ATE my reports!"_

"What, Cub, you're not mad about that, are you? I said I was sorry!"

Alex groaned and turned away. He'd have to redo them. Somehow, he didn't think 'An Eagle ate my reports' would be a valid excuse.

Well, unless they had met him.

-o-O-o-

On the way to school, Alex comforted himself with the fact that in three days and seven hours, Eagle would be getting married and, more uplifting by far, moving out. He was still growling quietly when he got there, though, and several people were looking at him strangely even while giving him a wide berth.

"Hi Alex!" called Tom, hurrying up to him, Emily with him as Alex had come to expect. The two were rarely ever seen apart in the mornings. At least he didn't have to dissemble around them, as they both knew what he did – even if Emily only had the vaguest idea.

"Hey Tom," he grinned, locking his bike up and readjusting the rucksack on his back. "Everything okay with you?"

"I was wondering if you wanted to come over, tonight, actually," said the shorter boy. "My parents bought me the new Fable game to make up for a massive row they had last weekend when Jerry came over to visit and thought you'd want to come and try it out with me?"

Alex sighed. "I'd love to, I really would, but I'm expected at the bank tonight to file reports and do some training. How about tomorrow?"

"Can't tomorrow," sighed Tom, forlornly, "Mum's decided that me and her need to bond, apparently. She's dragging me to the cinema."

Alex winced. He'd heard horror stories about mother-son bonding time. At least Tom wasn't being taken shopping.

"But, hey, what time will you be finished at the bank?

"Sometime between eight and nine, I reckon," said Alex, mentally calculating the hours in his head.

"So why don't you just come over after that?" asked Tom. "You could sleep over."

Alex's eyes lit up at the thought. A night away from Eagle? Sounded like heaven to him.

"Seriously?" he asked, grinning like a loon. "That would be fantastic!"

Tom looked at him suspiciously. "Ok, what's wrong? I know I'm your best – more like only – friend, but that reaction is still a little extreme."

Alex slumped. "Eagle," he muttered miserably, as if this explained everything and to be fair, it probably did.

"Ah," said Tom, warily. "I don't think I actually want to know."

-o-O-o-

The two boys talked all the way through registration, while Emily went to chat with some of her friends, but afterwards they had to split up due to Alex's unusual timetable. For the first week, he had had no idea what was happening, despite having spent three hours in Mr Bray's office with him and Miss Bedfordshire sorting out a timetable for him. He was taking Maths, Physics and Chemistry AS levels and supplementing it with GCSEs in Drama, Italian and Philosophy. That last had been a condition of returning to the school and Alex thought that perhaps Mr Bray was trying to help him, though he was unsure how. He had also taken the general humanities GCSE, but quickly dropped it, pleading too much work, though in reality it had more to do with Jared Freeman's presence in the class.

It wasn't that Alex simply didn't like the guy – though he didn't. At all. – it was that he didn't trust himself to be around him without trying to punch the living daylights out of him. He didn't want to put Mr Bray in an awkward position over taking him back, not when the man had already done so much for him.

Unfortunately, that also meant he couldn't punch the living daylights out of his maths teacher either, even though Alex could swear that the man aggravated him deliberately.

If he had to guess, he would say that the man had taken exception to the fact that Alex had been moved ahead a year, despite just a few months before having been considered an almost official 'problem child' and on the verge of being expelled.

Of course it was only a guess.

"Right, everyone. Settle down!" called Mr Mason. Alex supressed the instinctive glare and sank down further into his seat. "Have you all done the homework? Get it out, I'm collecting it now!"

Alex pulled the relevant sheet out of his bag and put it on the table in front of him.

Next to him, Jack, a boy in lower sixth, was swearing profusely.

"Forget the prep?" asked Alex, idly.

"Left it on my desk at home," replied Jack.

"Idiot," commented Alex with a smile.

"Jumped up squirt," muttered Jack, gently thumping Alex on the shoulder.

Mr Mason walked over and picked up the paper, looking it over carefully.

"And how long did this take you, Rider?" he sneered. "Five minutes? It looks as if you did it in your sleep."

Alex glared mutinously, but didn't respond. Of course the thing was a bloody mess. He'd written it with a sprained wrist, which he had acquired on a short mission last weekend.

He sank lower in his seat and tuned out as Mason started to grill Jack about the missing homework.

-o-O-o-

Double maths was followed by Italian, and then he was free. Albeit for a grand total of twenty minutes. But those twenty minutes were probably enough to make a decent start on the reports he had to redo for tonight, assuming he worked fast. He really, really wished he could type them, but no. The most heavily classified documents in MI6 were all handwritten, to prevent them being copied through hacking or keystroke loggers. Once he had submitted it, it would be typed up on a typewriter that never left the building by Jones or her new deputy, a thirty-something man who went by the name of Beddoes. Alex had yet to learn his first name, not that he really cared. From what Alex had seen, the man was a complete tool. He had neither the ruthlessness of Blunt, nor the courage to stand for his convictions.

To be fair, he had had the job for all of two weeks, and in that time Alex hadn't met him enough to form a well-rounded opinion of him.

He still thought he was a tool, though.

He sighed and shook himself out of his thoughts and began to scribble down a replica of the reports that had been consumed that morning.

He'd only been working for perhaps ten minutes when a hand was slammed down on top of the paper.

Alex had to admit, he really hadn't expected it. Last year, yes, perhaps, but rumours and people picking fights had died down as his year slowly realised that they had important exams in the summer and actually had to do some work. So he was a little irritated at being interrupted.

Slowly, he raised his head, his face completely expressionless. Normally this would be enough to intimidate whoever it was into backing down.

Today, Alex realised as he looked into the increasingly angry face of Mr Mason, it was probably enough to get him detention instead.

"Sir?" he said, switching his expression to passively neutral.

"What is this, Rider?" sneered the maths teacher. "Doing homework at recess? It's called _home_work for a reason."

"It's not homework, sir," said Alex, levelly.

"Well, what is it?" demanded the man.

Alex blanched. What could he be doing that he could argue against showing to a teacher? He could hardly say it was top-secret reports for the head of MI6, now, could he?

"It's- It's," he stammered.

"Can't think of anything, Rider?" gloated Mason. "Guess I'll just have to look and find out for myself."

"It's a diary!" blurted Alex, before blushing, heavily. A diary, seriously? He was _screwed._

At least he could probably persuade the man not to read it.

Then he looked at the man's smirk.

_Bugger._

"I don't believe you," he said, reaching out for the pages.

Alex slapped his hand down on top of them, in full panic mode, now.

"You can't do that," he said, automatically.

"I am your _teacher_," said the man.

"You…" began Alex, racking his brains for a way to get out of it. "You… Any search of students property needs to have been approved by the headmaster or head-of-year."

He waited with baited breath. It was the rules, but if the man chose to ignore it, lodging a complaint after the fact wouldn't change the fact that he had gotten his hands on very sensitive information.

For a moment, it looked as if Mason was going to ignore him, then he snarled and grabbed Alex's shoulder.

"Let's go and see him then, shall we?"

-o-O-o-

Mr Bray was not having a good day. Sometimes he really didn't know why he had ever agreed to take the promotion. Sure, it was a nice pay-rise, but it took him out of the classroom – which was the entire reason he had become a teacher – and gave him a lot more paperwork. Today he was going through complaints, and so was in a bad mood anyway. Apparently, one parent thought that one of their English teachers was too young to be an effective teacher. Another had complained about a teacher having a dog. It was frankly ridiculous.

So, of course, he was none too pleased when he saw Alex Rider frogmarched into the office by his maths teacher. The hand digging violently into the teen's shoulder made him raise an eyebrow. All he could think at the moment was 'law suit waiting to happen'.

Mr Mason flushed slightly and released Alex's shoulder. The blond rolled his shoulder slightly, but otherwise gave no sign of discomfort, though he was glaring daggers at the man next to him.

"Alex, Mr Mason. Is there a problem?"

"I caught Rider doing his homework outside," began Mason, moving forward. Alex remained by the door. "He claims it wasn't, but refuses to let me check and said that I would need your permission to search a student's property."

Alex winced. It did sound bad when you put it like that.

"I see," said Mr Bray, "And what did he say it was?"

"A diary," sneered Mason.

Mr Bray looked as if he were trying very hard not to laugh as he looked over at Alex.

_It's classified!_ mouthed Alex, more thankful than ever that his teacher had been told about his job. _Cla-ssi-fied!_

But the Headmaster simply looked at him blankly. Alex sighed and began trying to mime.

Mr Bray, for his part, simply grew more and more confused, and more than a little amused, as Alex began miming various actions. First, he shook his fists, then help up seven fingers and repeated the action. Apparently realising that there was no way that that was going to work, he angrily shook his head and then proceeded to make shapes with his hands.

Mr Bray looked blankly.

"Why do you have a problem with Mr Mason reading it, Alex?" asked Mr Bray, and Alex yanked his, now clasped, hands down as Mason turned to sneer at the teen.

Mr Bray frowned. He'd have to have a word with Mason about that. Teachers weren't obliged to like all their students, but they were expected to remain outwardly neutral. Something Mason was patently failing at when it came to Alex.

"It's just he doesn't like me very much," muttered Alex, looking at the carpet. "He'd use it to humiliate me."

Mr Bray frowned. He would definitely have to have a word with Mason, if Alex thought that.

"Mr Mason is your teacher, and would not do such a thing," Mr Bray reassured the teen, while sending Mason a look that said that that had better be true, or else. "But nevertheless. If you do not feel comfortable with him reading it, would you let me look at it? Just to verify that it isn't homework?"

Alex hesitated, then slumped and nodded, passing the paper over.

Mr Bray ran his eyes over the first line, and stopped, staring incredulously.

_Report concerning operation: Morningstar. For the attention of T. Jones or A. Beddoes. Clearance level 1 required._

He stopped reading, Alex's desperate game of charades suddenly slotting into place.

"It's not homework," he told Mason, flatly. "Now if you don't mind I would like a word with Mr Rider in private."

Mason nodded curtly and left.

"What the _hell_ were you thinking?" shouted Mr Bray, as soon as the door closed. "Working on- on _this_ in MY school? I've half a mind to give you detention for idiocy!"

Alex scowled. "I hope you didn't read it all," he commented, acidly, tugging the paper off the desk.

"Just the first line," Mr Bray reassured him. "But why on earth did you decide to do it now? Couldn't it have waited until you got home?"

"I have to go to the bank after school to hand it in," explained Alex. "I'm doing it over after the first copy got… damaged."

"And you couldn't simply print off another?" asked Mr Bray.

Alex shook his head. "Reports requiring clearance level one are never put through a computer. I have to handwrite them."

"And the first set are completely illegible."

"They got eaten," said Alex, flatly.

My Bray blinked. "E_aten?"_ he echoed, disbelievingly.

"Don't ask."

"What do you have next?" asked Mr Bray.

"Double Drama, then Philosophy," answered Alex, promptly.

"I thought so," said Mr Bray. "You're in luck – your Drama teacher is ill and the class is cancelled. You can finish your work in here."

Alex grinned. "Thanks, sir."

"If anyone asks, it's punishment for writing insulting things about a teacher, alright?"

Alex sighed. "Of course sir."

"Don't give me that face, Rider," instructed Mr Bray, sternly. "If you wanted a different reason, you should have come up with an excuse other than _diary._"

-o-O-o-

Mr Mason caught him on his way to Philosophy.

"Detention, tonight, for talking back to me," he hissed, apparently still angry about Alex's defiance.

Alex bit his lip. He couldn't tonight. As in really couldn't. He was pretty sure MI6 would take preference over school. So once again he fell back on the rules he never normally would have bothered with.

"School policy dictates that you give a student twenty-four hours' notice about a detention outside school hours."

Mason snarled. "Fine then. Tomorrow night. My classroom as soon as lessons end."

Alex nodded and moved silently passed the teacher. He could have contested it – he really hadn't done anything wrong – but it just wasn't worth it. At the end of the day, it would be his word against a teacher's, and he doubted there were many who would take his side. And besides, even if he did get out of it, Mason would just get even more angry and find another way to make Alex's life a misery. At least with this one he could predict it somewhat.

He was so finding a way to blame this on Eagle, though. Even if it killed him.

-o-O-o-

"It's all Eagle's fault," were the first words off Alex's lips when he – finally – collapsed onto Tom's sofa.

"Ok," said Tom, slowly. "Not that I'm disagreeing with you at all, but what, exactly, is Eagle's fault?"

"Everything. My shit day today."

"Oh? Care to run that by me?"

"He ate my reports."

"Wait, _what?_"

"I know. He's officially gone passed idiot and into imbecile. But anyway, he ate my reports, and that meant I had to do them at break today. And that meant that Mr Mason saw it as a reason to get one over on me and accuse me of doing homework. Obviously, I couldn't show him so I ended up forcing him to take me to the headmaster's office."

"But I thought Bray knew, now?"

"Yeah, he does. But, Mason has spread it around now that I keep a _diary_ because that's the only excuse I could think of."

Tom was stifling a snort.

"Anyways, that bit worked out in my favour, 'cause Bray let me work on it in his office when Drama was cancelled. But it pissed Mason off, so he gave me detention tomorrow because of 'back-talking'."

"So… how is this Eagle's fault?"

"None of it would have happened if I hadn't had to redo those bloody reports!" exclaimed Alex. "I could bloody well kill him."

"Well, how about you bloody well kill some villains on the Xbox instead?" suggested Tom, chucking him a remote. "You won't even get prosecuted."

-o-O-o-

The next day was relatively uneventful. There was a decided lack of Eagle-related insanity, perhaps because Alex had not actually seen him, though that wasn't always a guarantee of avoiding it. There were also no men in black combats trying to kill him, nor an enraged ex-MI6 head coming for revenge; he even managed to avoid Mason.

In fact, the most eventful thing was Jack teasing him in Physics – which the two boys also shared – about keeping a diary. He shut up fairly quickly when Alex calmly informed him that it wasn't a diary, but in fact a very detailed method to get rid of people who annoyed him. According to Alex, Bray had only not expelled him because he was scared.

And then it was time for detention. He guessed he wouldn't be able to avoid Mason any longer.

The first half an hour of the detention was fairly standard. Alex wrote the lines assigned and scribbled football tactics he wanted the school team to try on the page underneath whenever Mason wasn't looking.

But about forty minutes in, Mason left, giving Alex a threatening glare and an order not to move.

Alex would have ignored his re-entrance entirely, if it weren't for the gun now held professionally in his hand.

Somehow, he thought that was a good reason to pay attention.

He barely dodged the first bullet by throwing himself flat to the floor. The second grazed his arm, as he went into a roll, and then he was on Mason, knocking the gun away with a well-aimed kick.

"I know you don't like me," he panted, "but isn't trying to kill me a little drastic?"

Mason sneered. "Foolish child. I was assigned to kill you years ago, when you first moved to the school. My task was to kill you if you ever became an agent."

Alex stared at him in disbelief. "You have _got_ to be kidding me. Who was paranoid enough to put a sleeper in in the off chance that MI6 recruited a _kid_?"

"We are Acheron –the arch enemies of the Rider dynasty!"

Alex continued to stare at him. Since when had his family been a dynasty?

"Never heard of you, sorry."

"What? Your uncle never mentioned us? No bedtime stories that could have given you a hint? No songs he sung you?" The man looked incredibly put out.

"No, no and no," said Alex shaking his head.

"Well, it matters not. You will die either way."

"Actually, I don't think I will," said the teen, standing up and raising the gun he had slowly been moving towards. He doubted that Acheron was really the Riders' arch-enemy. Surely their agent would have been harder to defeat if that was the case?

"Turn to face the wall," he instructed, his aim never wavering. And so began the irritating process of tying the man up.

-o-O-o-

Half an hour later, Alex was on his way home. He had called MI6 to pick the man up and explained to Mr Bray. Surprisingly, the man hadn't seemed too disgruntled when he had said that he had better take over Mason's classes. In fact, he had almost seemed happy about it, which seemed a little odd to Alex, but the teen wasn't going to complain – anything to make his life easier.

Mrs Jones had heard of Acheron. They were a tiny criminal organisation who Alex's grandfather had decimated. Ian had then finished the job. Hardly archenemies – at least from their side. Apparently things looked different after you had been pummelled into the ground by a father and son tag team.

He did feel vindicated in his dislike of the man now, and no one could say he'd been exaggerating. (Mr Bray had decided that sticking as close to the truth as possible would be easiest. The story was that of a mental breakdown and trying to harm a pupil - Alex. The gun, MI6 and Acheron were, obviously, not to be mentioned.)

There was only one thing really bothering Alex, now:

There was absolutely no way that this was Eagle's fault.

Of course, he thought as he pushed open the front door, that wouldn't stop him from _blaming_ him.

-o-O-o-

_**A/N: Really don't ask about that first scene. I had an idea about Eagle feeding Alex's homework to a dog simply because he liked the excuse, and somehow that merged into this… quite possibly because they don't have a dog and Eagle was the closest I could get. I just had to get that excuse in there somewhere.**_

_**And the complaints are real – they were lodged at the school where a friend of mine works. She was the teacher that was apparently too young (aged twenty-something and teaching seven year olds). What was even more ridiculous is that someone five years older than her had a complaint lodged that they were too old **_**by the same person! **_**It really makes you lose faith in humanity, huh?**_

_**Anyway, review and tell me what you thought, yeah? :)**_


End file.
